80 Minutes of Killer Hands-On Real Estate Expertise from Tom Toole

hey welcome to the podcast so excited having a long time friend mr philly in the house tom toole check this out 20 years in the business he's only 28 years old i'm not sure how he pulled that off but here's the deal we're going to talk about how to get listings at scale today like that is the focus so tom for the people that don't know you that haven't seen you either on stage in an event watched you know i mean we've done a lot of stuff together um how have we known each other for like 11 years now i've been working with you 11 years yeah right i was going through my mind this morning so you you were like 27 20. you're being kind 28. okay but 20 okay but 28 years old so for all my from my vet vet vet friends he's you know 20 years in the business but like like give him the origin story like let's go back to like when we first met and then we're going to get into like this guy is masterful at all things prospecting marketing nurturing converting winning listings five listings already this week and he wasn't even involved in him but we'll get to that later give him a little backstory sure so you know similar to you my dad is in the business right and so i got licensed when i was still in college and i was a finance and accounting major and i was like well this sucks i don't want to do journal entries the rest of my life right i sold like three houses when i was home in the summer and i'm like wow these checks are awesome yeah and then that's where it all kind of started and you know then i met you 10 years later i you know stole full-time right when i got out of college and i really saw a plateau in my business and i was like man i got to do something here like this isn't working for me and signed if i watch one of your videos online signed up for coaching yeah and then that was 11 years ago and it's been like j-curve since well so give people uh give people context so last year 355 transactions 355 sales um when i signed up working with you i was doing like 35 deals a year which i want to be very clear for the people that are listening right now whether you're listening or watching 35 transactions a year is a lot when you look at the average of real estate professionals and even if you take the america's best list or the wall street i mean 35 transactions is no joke so what do you mean you plateaued at 35 well i couldn't get over the hump though right so it was like 32 35 then like it was kind of like that up and down sort of thing without a consistent growth trajectory yep and it i just i wasn't you know there's no training in real estate right like you join a brokerage and i'm grateful to have my my dad right he's a good mentor but he did new construction i don't do that we're a resale business so it was like what's the playbook how do you get bigger how do you grow and how do you improve your quality of life as well which we all know realtors tend to have pretty crappy qualities of life in a lot of cases because the business can eat you alive and so that's what i kind of saw happening and i couldn't couldn't get that breakthrough i was looking for and then i think it was like two or three years after working with you we doubled like 80 transactions and that was a big deal it was me and one assistant right and i like just had my son and he's our oldest that was that was about eight nine years ago and then it's been like it's funny once you had that one breakthrough like you'll continue to have breakthroughs but you always remember that first one where it's like whoa what just happened and that that is that's a moment in time i'm never going to forget and we use that to like train our people now and tell them what i went through so i can get them there quicker yeah they don't make the same mistakes that i did so un unpack if you will like some of the mechanics of that so if somebody's listening right now and they're like 18 or 19 like let's be clear for all my friends that are listening it's the it i call it the trifurcation in this case the bifurcation right so trifurcation is 40 of the people haven't sold a house in the most remarkable real estate economy on the planet but but tom like so many of my friends out here watching you fall into one of two camps you're really successful but you're stuck right 32 35 32 35 time resources you know there's just not enough time in the day that's usually the biggest issue right exactly or you're scaling right stuck or scaling both are wildly successful you've been in both places let's unpack though that year of the breakthrough what was it that you did mechanically that allowed you to make that jump well realtors tend to you know they they get business coming in and they stop looking for business and i made this decision which we're still like i'm actually getting out of it now because our business is changing but this has been my life for since that time which is i'm going in and looking for business every day yeah on the phones yeah using it as a weapon and you know using all the follow-up scripts that are there understanding dialogues knowing the right questions to ask and i made an appointment with myself every day from 9 to 11 and i was on the phone looking for business and specifically looking for listings right and we're going to talk about this obviously today buyers are great you don't get the same leverage that you get with a listing no you can you know our our goal and one of the things i got from my very first coach was turn it into three more transactions where are you going to get the next listing can you get a buyer from it how do you how do you leverage that and then all of a sudden things start coming in so it's that looking for listings because that's the leverage point that's what people want yeah they don't like they don't really care about realtors they want to find a house and they come to the people who has the most houses listed so right that was the big change like that that was strategically when that happened and then we brought on team members i stopped working with buyers and then everything kind of kind of took off from there but it was that discipline of looking for listings every day yeah so so when somebody hears that like you know again like we have such a such and i love you all very a very diverse set of listeners we got there's someone right now that's 16 years old listening to this and saying you know oh my god like i want to be tom toole at like 28 like imagine selling you know like that many homes right and then i've got someone listening right now that's like 68 and been crushing it for like two decades and when they hear you say nine to 11 they think cold calling well it it's you know you're like i know but that's all about their mindset it's prospecting right right like i mean it's finding it's finding listen finding business call what you want i mean it whatever it is like then you you get that listing and then if you have systems in place to leverage them yeah then things start to come in and no matter what happens and this is any business when you start making the calls and shaking the tree like things will come out of nowhere right you had nothing to do with but it's the universe saying good job keep going and there's no science behind it there's no data but it happens everybody that does it knows but there's case study after case study where that happens and people people can say it so i think it's that constant hey i'm looking for business i'm not waiting for things to happen you're being proactive not reactive like that's a big thing with mindset in this business that's what a lot of people don't want to do what's so interesting is like if my client maxine gallons who's you know you've known forever 82 years old by the way just got named number six in the world for berkshire hathaway her and her daughter right 82 years old had a monster year last year she would listen to tom and say well yeah that's what i mean that's what i started doing like you know 22 years ago and she'll say i never did as much as my coach you know tom ferry asked me to do but the one thing i did is i was hunting for listings every single day every single and she started with me in her early 60s now she's 82 and she's still doing it and so why do you think like let's just talk forget and god bless you if you're in that camp like the forget the one-third that hasn't done a deal right yeah the stuck group um why do you think that they resist that or do they resist or is it just they just don't have any time like they're like they're gonna say i just don't have any time i'm so busy i'm not busting their chops i get it because i hear it all the time help that person move through that what what are the baby steps that they can do to get more control of their time and get more focused on attracting listings so you've said this before if it's not in your calendar it doesn't exist right yes we're putting that on the wall in our office like that's how important this is because literally things will just come in and they're like oh i got to go to an inspection i got to show this appointment i got to do this and if you don't make that appointment with yourself if you don't say yes to yourself right that's what you're doing it's a mindset thing and it's hard to do like i mean it takes time but once you have that breakthrough and it starts clicking then it's like well of course i'm not gonna go show that house yeah i can't meet you then how's 11 o'clock or something like that yeah so it's it's really that discipline of i'm going to do this and nothing's going to get in my way and discipline will carry you when motivation can't right so whoa whoa whoa say that i get a little slower discipline will carry you when motivation can't yeah what does that mean what does that mean well like you know we all the same 24 hours right and you know you have the same amount of time as i do as tristan does whatever um but the point is that discipline is the difference like you're not always going to be motivated to make your calls yeah you might be having a crappy day you might have you know something might have happened in your personal life this is the real world things happen yes but when you're disciplined right like that discipline will happen because people they have their their creatures of habit right routine is a real thing and when you're out of routine you don't feel right you know just like working out we've talked about this a lot it's just like eating right all these things if you're disciplined enough to do it every day and that will of course you don't feel like it but then you set an appointment you're like yep that's why i'm doing it and you'll remind yourself so it's the discipline because the motivation comes and fits and starts it's the discipline of doing it every day yeah so so let's go back to so you you said the first thing is hey i just carved out 9 to 11. um and look we're talking about you know 9 10 11 years ago whatever like in that range right so back then who you may have been going after is very different from today so so i want to unpack a little bit more about let's go back to for you 2018 2019 right you're building your team and you are crushing on the listing side so give people context last year 355 now remember give them a little context for selling homes in pennsylvania during the pandemic so we were literally the last part of the country yeah that was named essential we were talking about this yesterday where it was philadelphia and the surrounding counties right pittsburgh you're good and like it was so archaic and they had testers from the state calling in the real estate offices because you know this is what they have time doing in a pandemic yeah ridiculous but um hey i'm a cash buyer in the home's vacant can you come meet me and let me in and you weren't allowed to do anything in person so this is what's going on and it was it's like the state is trying to catch you guys to see if you're actually 100 and and you know they they came out and said realtors are a bunch of yahoos they're not going to follow the rules that's why they're not essential but in new jersey and delaware which is 45 minutes away you're good to go right so it was it was it was crazy and that was from march 19th until may 19th when a lot of homes get sold so we have this ramp up of the year we're pacing really well and then the pandemic hits in march everyone remembers that yeah and we're shut down um and it was tough and a lot has changed since then in our business internally and as well as the what's happened in pennsylvania and so we're the last state we can't do anything then we come out of this and we were working the entire time we had like team zoom calls to prospects like everybody working from home and right and we tried to connect and do all that stuff but a lot of agents they just stopped working i mean i was i would be in touch with realtors and you know emailing back and forth and i get an autoresponder hey the state says i can't even respond to this email right now which is not true but this was the mindset right like it was it was crazy so we come out of this and then it's basically like memorial day weekend right and um we just start like the i think we listed 20 homes between may 19th at the end of the month like it was because of all the work we did for sure making nurturing following up staying connected you know helping people literally we we called and like we used a script that was and it wasn't really a script but it's like hey like how you guys holding up right now like how's the work environment for you um we were doing local business highlights for like takeout food and like salons that were shut down they're like hey if you want to you want some what you think you call it a hairpie or something like a haircut therapy like i mean like any sort of local business that was trying to stay open that's what we were trying to do uh because trying to help we're part of the community i mean you know we want to give back to the people that have provided us a great lifestyle and a great business for the past 20 years so this is all that was going on and then we come out of it and it was ba and we haven't stopped since it was like like a three-day period around like the holidays where it was a little slow but it's been like a spring market because the like everywhere else the demand's too high there's no inventory so it was tough and and the point was if you weren't making those calls during that time there's a lot of agents that haven't recovered they haven't done any business and some and a lot of people getting for load and there's all this influx of new agents coming in because they can't go back to their old jobs those sales jobs are gone right where they're flying all over the country selling stuff doing those things so a lot of people are getting into real estate right now so it's it's been i mean i don't even know how to explain it like i'm glad we made it through and that taught me a real lesson that you just can't give up yeah but it was it was crazy i mean it was i was losing my mind i mean i'll be very honest with you i listen and i'm just gonna say like for everybody listening everybody can relate to what you're talking about whether it was two weeks or two months or for some people as i've mentioned like i've i have a client who has an associate who's not left their apartment in like 13 months and and you know they're highly productive but they haven't left their apartment at their team yeah like they're petrified right it's that's a whole separate conversation we'll hit that in the future let's go back to i want every one of my listeners to get more listings at your highest listing taken personally year how many listings did you take 130 okay and what year was that it was two years ago i figured i feel like 2019 was sort of that's that's i've seen 18 19. so so give people context like he's masterful scripts and dialogues we want to dig into that he's obviously great at prospecting you're great at follow-up um if you were to like break down for people right now listening that you know again they could be brand new age they could be a veterinarian maybe somewhere in the middle they're definitely not a lot of the that first category they're more the stuck in scaling group what would you say are like the five or six most important things you did that year that consistently got you business from making the phone calls to following up to handwritten notes smoke signals you know me i don't care like what was it because that same thing is going to help people get listings today video follow-up is the number one thing i mean that no one does enough video follow-up let's okay let's go back to getting the appointment okay first right or getting the interest let's start it let's start at the top of the funnel and then go to the bottom of the funnel sure where where are these opportunities coming from and how are you going after them so there's all the lead sources right um the ones i look at them that have been the most successful for us expired listings a number one right and that's a tough phone call to make a lot of people are afraid of that call yeah i look at it a little differently they signed a listing contract with someone yeah so they believe in realtors yes they maybe picked the wrong one they got some bad advice but they wanted to sell there was motivation there and i always look for the people that are the most motivated right because if they don't have motivation they're going to waste your time and you've got to get clear on that so expired listings were huge for us our sphere obviously those were really the two things that have generated the most listings out of all so let's just stop for everybody listening expired listings and past clients and sphere right like those are those are polar opposite in many people's minds but you see them your reframe around expireds is no they already like real estate agents right they tried to sell and they got some bad advice and you're pretty good at helping people yeah well and you know that's that's a great way a lot of people asked me why i got into the business and i am a big believer that we help people this is the most stressful thing people go through and you could be the smartest guy in the room right you could be an attorney uh a phd and whatever but you may not know anything about how to sell a house right right and these people don't get it or they haven't gotten moved they haven't moved in a decade or two and they're like how do i right yeah what's changed and so i am a big believer that we help people and if you don't adopt that mindset yeah then you're not going to be able to crack the code in a lot of cases so i think that's if you're talking top of funnel yeah knowing that i'm doing a disservice if i don't reach out to these people i'm hurting them i'm not helping them like that's fundamentally really important and that's one of our core values at our team so knowing that's the case then you get on the phone with an expired listing and let's roll play ring ring ring hello hi this is tom uh yeah who's this hi tom my name's tom as well i'm a local realtor in wynwood and i was calling because i saw your home came off the market yeah yeah you got a lot of realtor calls huh got a few i wish uh wish some of you guys had actually called when my home was on the market yeah i i hear you i got to work with these people so i know how you feel believe me yeah so tell me a little bit about what happened what were you planning on moving to well uh you know we had a possible job transfer you know down to florida and you know my wife is kind of still traveling back and forth i know they don't go that deep real fast but i want to actually get to the fun stuff you know man hey like look i appreciate the call but i'm not really interested right now sure yeah well i i wouldn't be interested either if my home didn't sell i hear you it's tough yeah so your wife's going back and forth from florida so how's that working out for you right now it's brutal i'm just going to throw you i'm just going to throw you objections because your intro is perfect that's what they needed here it wasn't salesy it was just like hey look i know you guys are trying to sell let's do it one more time ring ring hello hi this is tom uh yeah it is tom hi my name's tom as well i'm a local realtor in wynwood or insert town of where where you're calling yeah saw your home came off the market why do you not say you know your last name why do you not say your company name like why do you not go in any of that stuff because it's about them it's not about me and you might get hung up on if you don't get the words out too quick i mean that's a real thing like these people will hang up on you right so so tell me about like the toughest objections you get and how did you overcome them so there's really like three right we've we've done this before i know i know but i want to listen i'm going to release i love dialogue yeah i'm going to re-list the same agent i'm going to sell it myself or i'm going to wait i'm going to wait i'm not gonna move right so let's go through it one at a time tom everything you're saying sounds great but like we love our agent phyllis she is bananas yeah well i mean i'm sure you have a good relationship with her you signed a contract with her totally get that so knowing that the average time on the market right now is about 30 days your home was on the market six months what's gonna happen differently if you keep her yeah i know man we uh we've actually been in that i mean that's it that's that that's all you need and they're either gonna go uh or screw you or give you a vanilla answer and here's the thing do they ever say screw you like you know what i mean right so so let's see you in philadelphia so uh i'm trying to be polite for my listeners out there i'm not going to put it up full philly style so so look tom look she's awesome i totally gave her you're saying i appreciate the hustle man why don't you bring us a buyer and phyllis is awesome so so obviously by you asking me to bring you a buyer tom that demonstrates you're still serious about selling so knowing that you should have sold the home six times and couldn't sell it once given the time on the market would it be that crazy for us to get together to look at another strategy yeah i'd have to run that past my wife so why don't you uh why don't you send me about like some information on who you are what you've done all that kind of stuff then let me sit down with my wife over the weekend and then i'll i'll ring you back next week i'm married too totally get it yeah and i'll certainly send you some stuff why don't we set up something tentatively because my schedule tends to book up a little bit and i can just call you next week to confirm so how's monday or tuesday after three o'clock uh yeah probably better tuesday but like penciled yeah of course i talked to the boss like i said i'm married too i get it so why don't we plan on tentatively tuesday at three and i'll call you next week to confirm so just for the record like phyllis you know as a long-time french gives a very very good rate in terms of commission i'm assuming you're gonna do the same well i mean she didn't give you any rate with commission because she didn't sell the house i love that line that's i think that's he he isn't um like a a maestro but no i mean i that's a great line i i do appreciate that but like at the end of the day like we're trying to get the most money out of the sale so like i mean it's kind of an it's a non-starter for us if we're if you're not willing to you know negotiate the way she did on her on her feet sure and you know we haven't even met yet tom so i don't have any expectation here other than showing you exactly how i can help you and if the meeting goes well i'm sure we can figure something out so i'm good with that let's just meet and see if we're the right fit because if you don't like me it doesn't matter what i have to say anyway because you're not going to hire me yeah all right so hey tom totally appreciate it but i think we're just going to we're going to take the home off the market we're going to kind of wait it out a little bit we just think that like now it's just not a good time to sell sure and and so i know you told me you're moving down to florida so is that still the plan i mean you're still gonna move down there or no it's it's kind of it's kind of off the schedule now sure it's off the schedule so now knowing that you were on the market last week if you would have gotten an offer at your asking price you probably would have taken that and moved right yeah i mean of course of course sure so if i could show you how we can get that plan back on track pretty quickly given everything going on in the market right now would it be that ridiculous for us to get together for maybe about 30 minutes yeah so do you ever make a like a bold crazy promise like i could sell your home in 30 days less especially like right now with the market like hey i can hit enter in the mls and get it sold i mean like i know you wouldn't say that but like the people that are listening understand the frothiness and creation of the market do any bold crazy promises anything that you recommend that's like a hook that sounds different or is it just make the damn call and be personable and connect i mean it's you know i i when you look at it tactically there's a thing here when i'm on the phone making calls i'll have the listing up in front of me so i'm looking at it i know what the heck i'm talking about right now that's a mistake a lot of people make right where they they're like oh where's your house i don't know if i see like crappy photos or there's no information i'm like hey there's a lot of missing information here if i could level this up for you i'm clear it will make a really big difference go where does that come in though well is that like when they when they try and divert when they're trying to hang up when they're not trying to hang out but we ask them why they why it didn't sell that's like the third question you go to where are you moving to why do you think it didn't sell and you know and and right now especially if something's not selling like there's got to be a problem like so it's and if you can demonstrate that to them right away and a lot of times they'll be like yeah we didn't like those photos or wow yeah you're right there is no video and like silly stuff that should be automatic especially given the way the market is right i mean people are talking just for con 2019 and the 2019 market was really good yeah it was just it was not like this but it was still like a three-month supply instead of a one-month supply so very seller-friendly right and just having that context of you actually took 30 seconds literally on the phone looking at the house and giving them more information because a lot of these people making these calls you got to realize who your competition is yeah they they close like a 16 year old kid at a dance right right they just go why don't you hire me they get really aggressive yeah no one wants someone to start arguing with them on the call when you're coming from a place of help and you're pointing out these things it gives people a different perspective i also noticed you didn't do anything of like you know we've sold you know 150 homes in the marketplace like do you like do you get into that in or do you you clearly didn't but do you and if so why and if not why if you're going if you're going for a really hard close or like hey i'm gonna uh i already got someone else in mind they called me earlier yeah hey don't make a mistake we are the experts in the marketplace at selling homes other agents can't we've done it hundreds of times and i will say that to people because what do you got to lose right right it's the hail mary exactly so that will work or if hey i committed to another agent i'm like hey tell me who you hired and they'll give me their name and i will look up their production on the mls and say hey this you know that agent sold three homes last year we sold three homes yesterday yeah is that really the kind of person you want handling your biggest asset where they're doing it maybe once every four or five months yep like just raise the doubt and get the meeting all you're looking for is the meeting and that's it people think they're gonna get it signed over the phone i mean it you know that that just doesn't happen right so if you can get the meeting prep for it i know i'm going to out prep anybody they're going to get a video before they're going to get all this stuff what's the video you send if they're like call me next week sure so we'll um we have some case studies so like reviews from people whose homes expired right um and it's a personalized video so hey tom it's tom here with re max blah blah blah thanks for taking the time to talk to me today i know it's a stressful market i'll make sure to follow up like i said i would next blank because i set the appointment to follow up and if you need anything in the meantime here's my cell number yeah and make sure you smile right like i mean that's like the main thing so smiling eyes and mouth yeah and like the dot on your computer screen like stare at it don't look at the screen like you got to make eye contact with them so it's nothing crazy it's the extra touch is the difference and the thing is they already probably had someone where it didn't work out they probably didn't follow up so you're showing them hey i want your business and yeah no one sends videos as much as you tell people to send videos nobody does it i know i know it bugs me please send more videos please send me a video please please um all right let's switch gears to your sphere right your past clients and sphere it's 2019 three months of inventory it's still as crazy it is and i know you're heavy on your sphere right now like what's the tone what's the message in 2019 that year that monster year of of listings taken what was the message what were you saying and then maybe what are you saying now let's give this combination of both so that hasn't changed we've just over indexed on it um what does that mean hey tom it's your birthday happy birthday yeah hey five years ago you bought this house how's everything going for you guys yeah use the ford script right family occupation recreation i never get the dreams that's weird but like literally ask those first three questions and that's all you have to do i mean it and it's i never asked for the order on these calls yes so here just call me i'm just i'm in your sphere ring ring hello hey tom it's tom toole here happy birthday how's everything going hey man thanks for calling i totally appreciate it yeah dude we're just you know we're busy we're hustling we're just trying to navigate you know these uh crazy times man how about you guys we're right there with you man i mean i know it's been it's been a crazy year for everybody so how's everything been holding up for you help the work environment been you know dude my uh you know my dining room table and my uh my closet have been fantastic all kidding aside like no i mean it's you know look we're i'm very blessed we're very productive everybody's working it's just different man we're all in it together and you know just head down man just dining room table and let's go yeah i mean it's it's been it's been brutal for everybody so i'm in the same boat you know i'm grateful we're able to work right now i'm grateful that my kids are okay yeah they're getting back to school so i hear you doing anything fun for your birthday i know it's kind of a weird time to celebrate a birthday right man i wish i wish i was going to florida or doing something fun but no i think we're just you know we're just going to chill with the kids and you know outside you know the weather's going to be hopefully nice this weekend get some just some play time with the kids man sure i'm i'm you know me i'm right there with you well i'm just going to send you some birthday wishes grateful for you tom enjoy your birthday and you ever need anything like household related like a electrician or something just call me i'm here for you love it like i love that because it's just it's just hey hey hey just touching man just going a little deeper right no okay so i'm the biggest advocate and you've heard me say this a million times before of like asking questions to either invoke the opportunity right we're getting people to talk about it and you did you're like you know how's work right how's home life so so do you hear from people when you're making those calls like was that a normal or do you get some people they're like dude we're thinking about selling okay they just they just bring it up we so we've had a couple like why i called this just happened and this was actually this is the best so it wasn't even my client it was a former team member's past client i called him anyway i'm like happy birthday what's up and get the guy's voicemail a week later hey we need to move like next week yeah and one over sign the contract um people you don't think are selling are going to sell and i think if you're not touching them you don't know and then all of a sudden there's the hey we worked with it 10 years ago and we're ready to list and it comes out of nowhere and maybe i called them six months ago but it's doing that every day and especially now because there's so much disruption in the market and it's so hard to get listings like i look at what i did to get listings when i was 22 years old and it was called people i know like circle dial right like all this like i mean you know the internet like lead business was not a thing 20 years ago no realtor.com was like just getting started so we've just been going back to like the super basics because if you do the things other people don't want to do you do whatever you want for the rest of your life right i would argue that uh like you know especially for my longtime podcast listeners you're hearing this consistent theme of all of our best clients you acknowledge hey multiple lead generation sources multiple approaches don't be myopic but i'm i'm really pushing people hard on like get back to deeper more meaningful relationships with your sphere and the like the joke that i play is i say grab your phone right go to your contacts look how many people are inside there remove at least 20 because they're probably real estate agents that you know right so let's just say you now have 800 people in your phone well the data shows that 80 of them right now are thinking about some i didn't mean they are they're in the research phase 10 of all the people in your phone are on the research phase and and i'm calling you out for some of you out there you have listened to me you've created content you've shot videos you're doing email marketing you're doing direct mail but if you don't go to the next level and go hey tom tom ferry how's it going like you didn't always do that though so what was the what was the shift for you well i mean so you know i i had a mentor when i first got started um so john if you're listening what's up so this guy he's still with our firm and he like he i've never seen anyone get as much as their sphere from him and a different business model than us but i mean literally he's writing handwritten notes doing all this stuff and it was i saw it and i'm like duh like this is why i have a mentor i'm gonna copy what he's doing like i'm not gonna try to reinvent the wheel here and but then i you know i i had the story right i don't have a sphere yeah bs anyone remember the memory jogger you had right life by design or whatever it was a through z yeah everything's like 157 questions so we take every one of our team members through that when they when they're on board because i don't want to hear you don't know anybody because you do my dog groomer turned into five transactions because i told him i was in real estate yeah and i gave him my card and said hey if you need anything let me know yep and i would see him every couple weeks and if you don't you don't give him that card that's a ton of lost income right there right and that's right that's one example of something everyone can do right now yeah yeah people to cut your hair right your dry cleaning right if you're still wearing suits but you know i mean like so that stuff is you got to make it consistent and you've got to make make it uh by design and just do it but okay but back to the question like you you know you did it early and then i think you moved away from it yeah well i know you've come back to it you know more so you know in the last like five six years so so what was it because like you know you took on all these multiple pillars and i'm not i'm not calling you out because i think it's very typical like in our world like we always work our sphere but we do less of the personal touch we do more of the electronic stuff the direct mail stuff and we assume that that's going to win and it does help you have to do it all but i'm an advocate for you got to send that personal video you got to do that face time you got to do that call when you see your ex clients home show up on the mls right with another agent it's a quick wake-up call yeah so that happens yeah happens once it's not going to happen again it was super high high-priced listing i thought i was solid with them and it was my bad it was my i had the meeting with myself personal responsibility and that's what changed it happened like literally one time like that happens once to you yeah now maybe some people don't take note or they don't pay attention but that's what changed for me right so let's go back to the funnel so top of the funnel past client sphere expired listings in your biggest year ever and then walk us through like middle of the funnel someone's like look tom we want to do something the next you know like maybe five six months we're just gonna kind of wait and that could certainly be even right now right so like what is the sort of follow-up strategy the nurture nurture nudge whatever you want to call it to win that business like walk us through the sequence so if someone has any indication they're going to move send them a follow-up video send them your resume like we have like a nicely designed one send them a link to your reviews what's in the resume how many like our sales volume how many years in the business just just a little background information like it's not it's it's a resume yeah it's and it's we do it for every one of our team members because they can lean into the team it can be branded for them yeah so that that's really important especially when you're a newer agent and people ask you those questions well hey i did this and our team did this and they're like okay cool yeah let's go so there's a resume linked to reviews we've developed our own like google map of sales right like you know i've heard this before yeah so we have all that stuff we send it to him with a personalized video and it's like hey tom thanks for taking my call yesterday looking forward to catching up in a few months you need anything in the meantime you just got questions about the market i'm here for you i'm ready to serve and i'll make sure to follow up like i said i would yeah they tell you to call in six months call them back in three and cut it in half yeah because these aren't just your leads these are other people lots of people and they're on lots of websites yeah so you know you want to cut it in half and then so we use boomtown right so if it's in a certain category it goes on a drip and they also get our weekly email of our real estate show that we put out um which is all content driven never asked for the order like here's what this section of the agreement of sale means or rates just went up what does that mean for buyers and sellers monthly market update that drops every tuesday no matter what so they get on that list they're on a drip we send them a video and we cut the follow up time in half yeah yeah all right so by the way everybody uh so i'm gonna divert from the funnel just for a second because it's a part of the funnel right it's part of the top of the funnel it's part of the middle of funnel it's the ongoing funnel how much content you put out on a weekly basis um a lot so we have four videos to drop a week that walk us through each one so mondays is typically like a motivational one um i'll shoot it on my cell phone like it's kind of like i mean it's the same thing you're doing right yeah it's like literally identical and it's all about like just getting motivated or whatever it's going to be yeah start the week get fired up yeah so that's monday tuesday is our our real estate show and that's our consumer-facing show so that goes out and it's just educating people about what's going on in the market not looking we never ask for the order we don't we don't do that it's more of hey inventories at this here's what it means for buyers and sellers like really simple stuff you're probably having these conversations with people all the time so anytime you get a question from a client that is the next show it's really that easy right um wednesdays we do our agent-facing show and it's like hey here's what i did to get this listing or here's this agent on our team that just took three listings in the past month yeah how did he do it yeah or she do it or whatever so it's it's all it's more helping the real estate community yep then on fridays we got like our news show um with myself and sarah from our team and uh it's like we talk about like some real estate topics like usually a local topic to the greater philadelphia area and just it's kind of like a like a fun thing we do um that it's more like community-centric and that's kind of what we're in it's a branding play so so monday is motivational and it's what is the purpose of that like who are you trying to reach what is the outcome i'm trying to reach people that think like me got it like i mean i have attraction yeah and you know it could be someone that's a financial advisor that we're gonna work together with i mean and he like so you know his hit he comes to mind because he like kind of busted my chops a little bit like oh you're posting motivational videos and then he did a presentation for our team at our retreat yeah about how to save money and now he's become a client and he refers us out and we're buddies so it's that that's like attracts like attraction though i mean you don't get that if you don't do that stuff yeah that's and it could be someone that maybe wants to get into real estate and we can have them come work with us and if they're going to like what we're putting out then that's the kind of people i want to work with so and then the tuesday goes on social yeah we have a whole distribution calendar that that our marketing department handles so it goes everywhere okay so and typically so 33 000 emails what's the average open rate are are they clicking like like mine where they go to my site are they going to youtube you go to our youtube channel okay so and what's the typical open rate on the email 17 to 22 percent okay so pretty pretty standard across the board especially for the size of your email base i'm happy it's above 15. i mean that's what i'm looking for okay good all right so and that goes there and then the wednesday show again was more like to agents so why are you doing videos you're an agent why are you doing videos for agents well there's a lot of agents that help me i mean i mean like legitimately i mean i'm part of this ecosystem for how long 11 years that's a long time right it's a quarter of my life more than that so it you know you look at that and like there's someone out there that probably can get some value out of that like i'm not trying to become a coach like people think they they write like oh hey coach i'm like i'm not a coach guys like relax like i would be a horrible coach i've said that to you um but it's you know there's stuff that i've done that can help people right and you've connected with a ton of people that have helped me yep it's giving back one yeah secondly we're looking to grow our team so how do we recruit and there may be agents in our marketplace like i want to do more of that yeah it's a way for me to reach them without having to be like you know like prospecting for agents and doing all these things it's it's it's a branding play right yeah and third i think it just raises your your um industry right right i think there's a and that can become an roi for referrals i mean you get people coming from yeah like out of state and they say well i saw your stuff on youtube or you were on this podcast or whatever else so there's there's a lot of reasons to do it yeah yep i i agree i agree you told me too so i mean it's not like i'm uh i'm sitting here not being coachable right but you're but you're doing the work and that's i mean that's you know part of just the fun of our relationship is i know you do the work right and and like and he's got a beautiful family and i mean you're busy and you carve out time for that and making phone calls and leading people but let's go to the last one the the friday show is like news today and today in philly like here's what's happening on the main line like that kind of stuff total brand building right right you usually do like a real estate topic you ever see pti on espn of course yeah so we have like the ticker at the top oh that's beautiful we go back and forth a little bit about like the topic yeah and that's it i mean it's something we were highlighting local businesses for a while during the pandemic like we kind of change it up what we see fit but it's really hey we're here we're part of the community and we want to talk about what's going on do you ever get upset uh at uh maybe a a view count that you thought man that was a really good show like not a lot of people watched it i i if you do that i mean you're sitting there watching that stuff you're never gonna put on any content right you gotta be if you look at the first video i ever posted like it's still on our youtube it's hard like it's bad and tristan just laughed like he knows exactly what you're talking about i mean it's horrible but we just kept doing it and you know what it also when i'm leading a team and saying hey guys get on video and they're all nervous about it i'm like let me show you guys the first video i posted yeah and they can go find it really easily yeah and they're like okay and it makes everyone feel a little better i mean because i think there is look if i can do video anyone can you gotta look at this face like it's fine but people freak out about that right i mean that's how it is so you know that that's that's as much a part of it as anything else so someone's listening to that and they're they're overwhelmed because they're like they haven't hit the live button on facebook or instagram like let alone like four full production shows you didn't start that way you were you started with what like how did you what was the origin this thing called an iphone right right right there it got effective it was like a wired mic like you can see like i clip it to my jacket and then i would set it up on a tripod like you got over there yeah and would just film it and it was like it was it was it was total disaster like it did not but the content was good enough that people started like listening and watching because it was really we started with the agent or the consumer-facing show right so if i think the first episode like philly.com came out and said it's a buyer's market and inventory was like three months and i'm like well this is ridiculous this is going to be the first show and yeah that's like the inquirer website like the local paper site and we just said hey this is wrong here's what's happening in the market you need any advice we're here to help and that was literally how it started that was after that was like 2016 it was after a team plus event in charleston we wrote it out if i remember correctly so it it was bad i mean you know i mean the video like i would like right on the whiteboard like it's all crooked like the lighting was horrible so yeah yeah you get better it's progress right uh big big mental note for everybody it's progress over perfection right progress over perfection you got to start someplace right all those cliches journey a million miles blah blah blah we all get it okay so we were talking about the middle of the funnel and we got diverted into video but but i think it's an important strategy for people to understand like when you put up this much content at scale we say all the time like myself and jason and others and you like we all get like the more content you put out the more you attract your tribe the more trust you create the more likable you are the more come list me i trust you calls you get so so when you implemented all of that did all that happen for you did you get more yeses was it easier is it still easier i know you're in a competitive marketplace everybody is yeah um i remember the first time i really knew it was working is i went to a listing appointment and the guy's like hey you're the guy who's on tv and i'm like huh and he's like your youtube channel and i'm like wow i'm like can i just give you the contract right now do we have to have this meeting and like that's when you when you when you someone says that to you like but you got to be consistent it's not the quality the quality is important because you want to have some sort of relevant topic yeah it's more important to be uh garyvee says this you want to be 85 every day versus 100 when you feel like it and it's right it's the same thing you talked about and just you got you got to be consistent if you put out one show right you don't do anything nobody's going to watch it's got to drop every day you like if for us it's every tuesday right we have not missed a tuesday since 2016. yeah i mean that's just how it's a lot that's a lot of tuesdays yeah and that's and that's an evolution of show quality content style lighting you know maybe two camera shoot versus one camera versus an iphone right you just keep evolving um so going back to the so the middle of the funnel it's been impactful what would you say to the person that is listening right now and they're like i got 800 people in my database i would just be afraid to say something on camera like what if i say the wrong thing or oh my god like what do you say to that person well you say the same thing you're saying to your clients i mean that's all this is and the most effective one is how's the market like give them some market stats tell them the year over year trends and do it once a month if you don't want to go every week start once a month and send that out do do a short form of the video right now just like how's the market like so we all know that this is the number one question and it really depends if you're looking to buy or sell or rent or invest and shake your head no when they say rent that's like really important yeah um and you show them the number of sales uh year to date three just do the show so there's 1500 homes that sold through february that's up x percent year over year prices are down x percent year over year up or whatever the change is and you get all this data from like your mls like it's all right there right here's inventory levels here's rates and this is what it means for buyers and sellers it's like a five minute show yeah give them the stats and then give them your opinion on what it means for buyers that's what it means for sellers that's the key give them your opinion right because the stats they can get right but what's cool is when they start to get the stats exclusively from you yeah which means they're not going to zillow they're not going to relate.com they're not going to redfin maybe they are but like they're using use the local resource to contrast it maybe to what's happening on a national level okay back into the funnel someone says they're gonna move in six months right you're gonna call them in three months they're getting emails from you now right are you watching open rates are you paying attention to that you use boomtown so you got some analytics that maybe the average person doesn't have here's the this is really important you don't want to mass email your database through your crm because people will unsubscribe so you can't so i don't have this and we use mailchimp right and our marketing director handles all this so i'd love to tell you like i'm checking it out but she's reporting to me like we're supposed to yeah and we do look at that um what we also look at is their engagement on the site right so the the thing for sellers that i know people don't do and any crm can do this yeah put them on a sales activity drip relative to their home right and send it out every two weeks yeah you can automate this so and you can like do like the mapping tool right so it's this part of their neighborhood because then it looks like you know what you're talking about you don't want to send them the whole school district or the whole township or whatever municipality it is so send them something similar yeah everyone should be on a property trip um whether it's a buyer or a seller and then you change the frequency and then they're getting data from you right and then when they go to look on this on for the data they're going to your website they're not going to zillow or redfin or these other places where there's a lot of off-ramps or additional fees right i mean like so you don't want to hurt yourself there and that that's really effective too and i don't think we talk about that enough in general and the seller alerts that's what boom like those things crush yeah so let's let's i'm going to divert again from the funnel again and and i want to talk about um automation systems software walk us through like as you're onboarding someone new on your team what are all the various softwares they have to learn how to use yeah so our tech stack is you know what we do with boomtown is i'm not i'm tech savvy enough right so we are looking for places where it's going to be easy for agents to onboard so anything if there's an integration we're big on that so boomtown's our crm that integrates with csu so we can number numbers track and see what everyone's performance ratios are also integrates with bombbomb i'm like huge bomb bomb user uh i mean and then you don't get the big email that you can't send it's an embedded link so those three things all integrate right there yep they have to know how to use google right like shared sheets google docs all that sort of stuff they have to download the boomtown app on their phone then they go through the boomtown training and then the addition we have everything is like video based right it's like an lms that we built um on a training site so those are three major ones the mojo dialer to call through people because it's way more efficient than manually dialing yeah so we have all these different things and we just want our agents like living in the crm where you go check your vitals or yeah okay this is who i need to talk to today and the whole point is it helps them work smarter because they're already working harder right so then it's tough to lose and they're already out working people that don't use the software like they're supposed to you can use any crm you want exactly learn how to use it right now like i'm i'm i'm the big offender i'm like jumping and start using something yeah without going through the training yeah don't do that yeah go through all the training right it's all video on demand yeah and it makes it really easy so our tech stack isn't anything crazy yeah what about transaction management we use dot loop which also integrates with boom town um and that you know again the the the back end takes care of all this which is great that's why the support staff so they make sure all the paperwork's there the the dates are there they put the deadlines in like and it all goes through boomtown i mean that that's the beauty of it project management project management we use trello so and that's that's more of a support team and and leadership uh the agents really don't don't do that stuff but we use trello and we just move it along we have like a weekly cadence of meetings with marketing and ops and everything else where do you get data like data on like do you use rebind do you do use house canary do you like what like how do you get data to understand more of what's going on inside your marketplace so i mean honestly the easiest thing we do is we so we watch this week in housing our agents watch this because if you get the economic trends right you can communicate that you don't you only need like five talking points like it's not it's not anything that crazy and so we've got all that down from this week in housing and literally we just shared the link to our private facebook group for our team yeah we do a lot of coaching in there um and we just put it right in there and then every week um or every month our marketing team what they'll do is they'll take that monthly report from the mls or from the board of realtors and they put it together in a handout for the team and they just send it out in slack they post it on our facebook group so the agents don't have to go looking for it yeah it's right there and they can say here's what's happening with prices here's this here's that so you know we're i would probably do a little better with the market stats but it's just this is real life so this is what we're using right um so let's let's go back to the funnel right so now we understand at least the tech stack you're using you also mentioned slack which i love yeah i mean it's beautiful like i've a couple ceos i'm working with in bigger startup companies you know 50 80 people and they're like no email we're not like i'm not saying they're not doing email marketing they're just like we're trying to get away from email everything's inside slack not recommending you do that but it is a growing trend that we're seeing that's how we handle things with our team it's hey you want to talk to me you slack like don't like literally do not email me because i'm probably not gonna i'm not gonna respond intentionally because i want you to use slack yeah and then like this is important for agents when i see the slack notification pop up that's a lot different than getting like a text message from somebody where it could be like some dumb meme your friend sending you yeah yeah um so i know what it is and that that goes a long way and that's the same thing with using boomtown when you email and text or boomtown you get a boomtown alert so i'm like all right this is business i got to respond to this right but the amount of messages that people get in general it's it's a lot to take care of so if you can segment it that way you know what's popping up on your phone it makes life a lot easier cool so let's uh let's go back towards now it's it's hey we're getting near the ready stage you're calling that person at three months they said they're gonna move at six give us like some options on what's that like so ring ring ring hello hey tom it's uh tom tool here following up with you like i said i would how's everything going today you're like the guy in my email with all those videos man like you know congrats i'm glad you still took the call after seeing those videos that's a good sign right so um i i know you were talking about making a move in the next couple months here i just wanted to give you a call to follow up see if you had any questions about the market if you want to see what's trending right now or there's anything i can do to help you know i keep hearing all this stuff about inflation i you know i saw the interest rates have gone up since we spoke last i'm getting a little bit nervous to be honest about the market like i like what what do you think is going to happen in the next like two three months sure so rates have picked up no question about it and you know knowing that you're looking to sell and move out of the area you're still in a great spot because even as rates have ticked up inventory is still less than a month right now and an even market where buyers and sellers have equal leverage it's a six month supply so you're one-sixth of that so even if rates went up another point there's still people that are buying homes because they need to and you have all this millennial demand coming right now there's 70 plus million millennials in the country most of them didn't buy homes yeah they're 50 50 million plus three quarters of them they want to buy a home in the next 24 months so that demand is not stopping yeah as long as that's the case you're going to be in a great spot yeah even if inventory spikes up to a three-month supply you're still in a great position because it's so low right now so i'm not nervous the rates might pull back a little bit with some of those people that were buying just for the payment but the demand's still going to be there for the people that really need to buy which is who we want buying your home because they're going to be the ones that close and are easy to work with yeah and i get all i can i gotta just be honest man like my wife has been on you know site x and like she's sending me you know like emails every week oh look at this house check this house out and then like a day later it's gone right so we're we're we're gonna make a trip down there we're gonna be down there hopefully in the next you know month or so and and we're hoping to try and find a house i'm just i guess i'm just a little bit nervous like i keep hearing that i could sell my house really quick and i should make a lot of money but then all of a sudden i'm displaced because i'm not just moving down the street i'm moving from the state you know for you know for my work and i'm just a little bit nervous about like that transition like what what are other people doing how do i like how do i time all this i don't want i don't want to like rent a house like i want to move and move in well if you can buy before you sell that's the move right now that takes a lot of stress out of it the harder thing is securing a home so how are you searching for properties right now you're just looking online i mean we've you know we've met a couple agents down there because i've got another friend who's down there so it's kind of making a little bit easy for us um but again it's the same i mean that market is like i know it's hot here but it's crazy there like there's just no nice homes on the market right so so we're trying to figure out that um i don't know if i'm answering your question entirely but like yeah it's just it's a stressful time because like we know we got to do it we got to be down there but i feel like i know i'm going to you know put the home in the market it's going to sell really fast and i'm just like give me some like what would you recommend like how do i make this an easier transition so you know number one we got to see what the financials look like for you if you can buy the home and secure that home first before selling that's going to be the easiest path what we also know is because of the seller friendly market conditions you can get a post-settlement possession right now you can negotiate a longer term close you have all the cards in your favor and buyers like you they just want to get the house right now that's all they care about because the market's so competitive so what i would recommend we do is why don't we sit down just have a strategy session about how to work through all this because i can talk you over the phone but if we're not sitting down going through all the different scenarios yeah you're not going to be prepared and that that's the most important thing so we can take advantage of these conditions and also make the move easier for you yeah so if you can't find the new home down in florida i know you've got a time and deadline coming up what's plan b what's your backup plan that's like my favorite question you know what like that's the problem we don't really have one because we're trying to time this right as you know uh the school year giving us like 30 days before the school year begins again and you know my kids are going to be in school so it's uh there's no i mean i would hate to go down there and have to rent right but that may be what we end up doing because i'm you know like i'm just being candid with you like i need the cash out of this property to go buy the next property and if that if that's the case then what i know is this let's work on the longer term possession let's work on a lease back until you need to absolutely get down there and let's find you someone down there that can produce some inventory instead of you just looking online and bringing them houses tell me more about that so are they sending you any coming soon listings are they prospecting shadow inventory tell them like what's the search process been like for you no i mean i get like a email alert of new listings that are coming up and you know sometimes there's two or three and sometimes there's you know one so no what what is shadow image so there's a number of homes right now in our marketplace i don't know florida but the point is i want to get you someone down there that can they can do the same thing we do where these homes are either temporarily off the market or withdrawn meaning they're under an active listing contract and they pause the marketing period yeah so these homes are for sale they have an agent and then on top of that you know there's homes that maybe came off the market a year or two ago and they may be getting back in the market as well so i can what we would do here is i would send you these properties if you like any i can pursue it for you yeah and that way we're maybe getting some off market opportunities which is what we've had some great success with with people that are just like you or they're having a hard time finding the new home yeah so if that's something we can set you up with down there i've got a couple great contacts that i could put you in touch with and you can just talk to them on the phone and see if that see if that makes sense you are uh very smooth very direct very deliberate in your language like how much how long does it take if somebody's brand new and they're listening they're like they're probably taking notes like oh that's a good that's oh i should you know right and the veterans are like going yep yep ooh oh oh you know what i mean like just like just like you do when you're like you know role-playing with all your buddies um how long does it take to get good at scripts and dialogues if you commit to role-playing every day like the whole goal of role play is to talk to less people and set more appointments like you want to keep your skills sharp you want to be able to you know do the same work but more efficiently so when i when i got into coaching i remember i got this email was it like the i met you at the re max conference yeah carl judo sends me an email yeah and he's like you need to role play every day i like i just started working with him and i'm like okay and then i just set it up because i'm like forrest gump half the time with this stuff but yeah i did that every day and it was like working on the scripts and getting them down so it took me i mean and that was when i and then i had that big breakthrough here right after i started working with you guys so i would say probably took about a good 12 months to like really refine things but then i'm constantly working on it i mean this is not something that happens overnight but if you make the commitment to practice right you don't want to practice on paychecks like i mean you know that's where you can lose money and lose revenue so if you make that commitment just 15 minutes a day is all it takes right and right the role play call should be like this you get on the phone you do the role play you give feedback like don't like bs or like complain about what's going on it's like get on role play give feedback get off the call right right and then ideally go do something yeah go use that i almost think like it shouldn't be called role play it shouldn't be it should be called confidence building because the the thing that i see i mean you know 31 years into this is there's basically two kinds of people people that are really confident and people that can kind of fake it but internally they're cracking and freaking out in front of a customer heaven forbid they get an objection a condition and they don't even know it's a condition not an objection yeah yeah you're with me like like they just they fall apart and crumble okay i'll just do it for less right so i want to stress to the people listening right now confidence building that's all we're talking about like the more confident you are the more smooth you are the more you're not thinking about you you're thinking about them right you're just in the moment with them and you know how to navigate the situation i actually just sent a bunch of a bunch of our coaches um i'm gonna scrub his name so i'm not gonna say it uh but he is the harvard professor who just came out with a brand new book on negotiation yep and even though the harvard business school like they have a set strategy around how they teach to negotiate what he did was very cool he wrote the book and i'm sure he saw sold a bizillion copies but he basically took every chapter and broke it down into like like one chapter could be five videos three minutes long i have taken every negotiation class on the planet i am obsessed with it right just going back through and one of the one of the cool hooks was how to negotiate over zoom right and he's talking about like big time negotiation houlihan loki debt restructure deals you know monster monster monster amounts of money and we would typically be sitting in a face-to-face setting like this and instead they're like now it's instead of saying hey you take your team take a break let's go get some coffee let's go walk around the building they're all just sitting there on zoom going we're deadlocked what do we do right and literally people just get pissed and they yell at each other because they don't have the skills right like even just like these interesting little like how do you do that over zoom to pull back step away right it's just i don't know i'm super fascinated i'll have to put let's put a link up tristan for i don't want to miss say the guy's name but it's bonkers anyway confidence building let's go back to let's go to the bottom of the funnel because that was all super good the listing presentation what you're teaching your team what you do what are the like do you follow a set of steps like you know there's seth godin came up this really cool thing in one of his emails and he said it's about following the process and his metaphor was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he says you don't take the peanut butter put it out on the table yeah and then put the bread on no you put a plate down first then the bread then you do the peanut butter then you do the jelly then you do the other bread and then you cut it four and you share it right yep he said but most people what they do is they put the peanut butter in the wrong position then they put the bread then they do the jelly they screw up the process and then they say that doesn't work you with me yeah exactly what's your process what are the steps so it's the formula you set the appointment this is where it all starts you set the appointment get off the phone immediately like don't like you never see people don't talk themselves out of business oh god all the time so yes hey great i'll see you then i'm going to send you an email tom like get off the phone and don't screw it up and i still do i'm like all right i got it i need to get off the phone now like you'd be surprised what happened see a tuesday yeah then after that the same day send out a pre-listing video right like and it's because no one's doing this stuff and it has what's in it so it has an outline of our marketing plan okay resume reviews and this form letter you remember uh why am i even writing this down um keep going it was uh it was like leroy hauser or something if you remember him it was like a crs instructor he said like send this letter out and i'm like cool and like we were actually mailing the letter at the time right this is 20 years so yeah how far things have come but literally we send this uh we send the letter out and that goes out with a video through boom town so i can see if they open it right that's really important yeah um then i will call and confirm the appointment a day before and it's the pre-qualification script that comes from the sales edge workbook that everyone knows and it's you go through ask those questions you add you pre-qualify 100 of the time right when we do these trainings with our team it's do not deviate from this process because you will list homes at a 72 clip when you get in the door right if you want to argue with me that's fine this is what we're this is how we're doing it and it's going to you're talking about in a uber uber competitive situation not just your past clients and sphere this is everybody you want to and sometimes your past clients are interviewing other people too so when you deviate from the plan or you assumptively think you get the listing yeah and that pre-qual script will answer that for you because one of the questions you ask is hey tom if you feel comfortable and confident i can get the home sold and i feel the same way are you ready to get started at the appointment right that's like the last thing you ask and if i know they're going to say no i say you know what i know i kind of know the answer here but i'm going to ask anyway just to be sure because i don't want to say that to people yeah because i i just want to be prepared right so you you give them a little bit of a hook there tell you i'm just all about the prep work right yeah so you you kind of don't know when they say no or they don't say hard no they just go look you know we're talking to a lot of people so ask me the question but do it in the way that you think you're not gonna get it okay so hey tom i'm going to ask you this question just because i'm i i like following a process i kind of know the answer already but i just want to be sure so if you feel comfortable and confident i can get the home sold i feel the same way would you be ready to get started at the appointment yeah you know i appreciate that question but yeah i'm going to be honest like you know we we know a bunch of agents and you have an impressive track record there's no doubt you you follow up you're diligent i just you know i we we have a lot of options we'll see when we get to the meeting we'll see well i'd be surprised if you didn't know another realtor because they're all over the place and obviously the meeting's got to go well so if you don't like what i have to say you're going to be like it doesn't matter what happens so it's true totally get that just want to be totally prepared here so yeah see you monday at five and yeah we'll take it from there boom okay so pre-listing video with your you know your resume your mark you know your marketing plan all of your reviews right and then you call the day before you go through the prequal script and then when you show up give us your process so we are from the northeast yes i wear a suit and tie to these appointments like this is an interview and i i think people forget that and other markets are different i know what works here like my dad had me in a suit when i was like three years old like i mean it's you know it's so i know the program yeah that is how we do things right like and people say oh you don't need that you can say whatever you want right this is how we operate so what gives you the most confidence yeah right that's what i would say 100 and know your market know your audience yeah and this this probably wouldn't fly in places like newport beach or other area like i mean it's a little different thing but that's what you know we're we're that kind of place so show up ready to go be on time yeah right like and if you're running late call them and tell them you're running late like things happen but like these these are basic things that you want to do make sure you're smiling when you show up today's world wear a mask when you go to the dorks you don't know what the what what the situation's going to be right right um and again pennsylvania is a little different than other places so make sure you're on time you're you're suited up right you're smiling you know know how you're going to walk through and then when we get there and this is a hard move but it's something my coach pushed me on is hey tom i'm going to take a walk around the house is it okay if i go by myself so i can see it the same way a buyer would why do you do that because i don't need a 20-minute tour of the house i'm trying to get in get the contract signed and get out do you think that breaks rapport for some people it probably has in some cases the majority of the time it's worked pretty well i mean okay you look at the numbers right i mean right it's not going to work all the time but and then what do you do when they're like no no i want to show you the garage i'll just i'll kind of let it i mean you got to let it happen you can't you can't be silly about it but no no no no no backup pal like i've never met you let me walk through your house all by myself you know you got to you got to kind of like smile and and play it a little loose but that saves a lot of time i mean getting that 20 30 minutes back right that's really important so and i'll tell people the first thing i want to do when i come over is walk around the house and take a look um so we'll do that then i'll meet him at the table and i'll say how where do you want to sit kitchen dining room somewhere and then the body language is really important so like let's say i'm just talking to you or i'm talking to you and tristan you got to sit there and position your shoulders so they're open to both people right i will lean over it like this to show i'm engaged like with my like forearms on the table like i mean like just to i'm not sitting back and taking it too casually and then i'll you know kind of go over the basics with them so hey the plans moved to florida nothing changed right yeah whatever um went over a couple things here and then one of the most important questions if you don't ask this on the prequal it's not in the script but we we we work it in what are you looking for in the agent you're you're going to hire yeah and then they'll say well we want communication we want this we want that so i will hit on those things might discuss fees right all that stuff i try not to mention the fee no but until they might they may um and the reason i do that is i want to hit on what's important to them first so if they talk about communication hey here's our communication plan right if they talk about how when someone i can trust or i don't want you to tell me what i want to hear yeah hey that's the difference between a good agent and a great agent a great agent gives you all the news and helps you out and guide you through the process a good agent may tell you what they think you want to hear so you'll hire them you don't want that kind of person do you okay let's go and so make sure you get the basics down hit on what's important to them you got to make it about the person not not you yep and then we do have a formatted presentation so it's i read this book like when i was like 22 years old or something it talked about like the three p's i don't know like property um price like uh i don't remember it's marketing how well the home shows you've told me this there's three reasons why a great home sells yep buyers need to have the right emotional reaction when they walk through the door and i'll tell them our staging team will help you with that because you don't want me doing that that's another time saver yep you have to have the right exposure online and offline i'll go through a marketing plan and then the home has to be positioned properly to sell and then we'll go through the analysis yeah price so that's really the format and we have a scripted marketing pitch that's always evolving because we're testing out stuff so we'll talk about hey we can get we have a staging team don't help you get ready but it also saves the agent's time because you're not taking like the room measurements yourself and writing down all the features like that's not what we want agents doing so we have that we have a staff member come out and do that we have two of them now so that that happens so you save time there go over the marketing pitch with much agents don't go over the marketing plan like at all i mean and so that's so they know what the plan is and we give them like a high level one and then we go through show them the results they can expect here's our team's rankings blah blah blah this is how great we are hahaha whatever yeah and then i'll actually say to him because you don't want to like come off like braggadocious right i don't even know if that's a word i think i might have made that up but i've heard yeah whatever like yeah you want to come off like you're like hey i'm the best like that's not yeah the reason i'm showing this to you is because we're helping a lot of people like you get their home sold yeah and i just want to show you what you can expect it's all about you yeah and and that then when you say it like that it's a little different then you go through the market analysis and then i don't give them a price i say hey so after seeing all this data what do you think about the price of your property and then shut up and stop talking and let them kind of guide you a little bit and they may say well we want you to tell us a number and i'll usually give like a range and and i'll point to the data because that's really what sets it um and then the closing line i've learned the best is you get through all this so you can you can this is where you read the body language and everything else it's like hey so you guys want to get started and see if we can get them to sign and like that that's the game plan it's not anything crazy it's just uh it's a formatted plan that works and has a documented result yeah and the key is 72 and you know for contacts right for the person listening right now how many how many agents do you have now on your team we have uh uh 21. okay so 21 agents on your team we're going to unpack this also 21 agents on the team and then how many of them are listing property versus maybe exclusively working buyers so we train everyone how to list from day one because the buyer the buyer seller combo gets a little dicey right you're bringing in like another agent that comes in and all of a sudden things get messed up and you know we had done that in the past when i was listing properties and then we'd bring in someone on the buy side that's a little different because i'm running the team and it's it's more formatted so we're training all our people how to list from the beginning we have agents that are actually going out and like i want to list so i don't want to work with buyers anymore so they're and it all comes that discipline of prospecting and all that other stuff but we've got legitimately four agents right now that are listing at a high level and some of our new people are coming in and i mean they're getting listings within their first month or two how much are they leaning on you the you know the brand name the you know the last name the performance the map the track are they doing all that stuff i mean that's how we train them because they're going to be a lot stronger with us and they're all going to be on their own and you know when when you say hey our team did this and it's we like adjust our pronouns it's r we like we over me and like i'll have people say that i'm like i'll stop a meeting and be like hey i don't want to hear my or your it's we are collective yes when when people get that and then whether to support them and i'll coach them up with like let's look at the comps if they're a little unsure it's a five minute meeting our sales manager does the same thing we get them so ready to go for these presentations they're going in and getting them because if somebody called you from nova scotia they're listening this right now and they're like but i'm a newer agent or i'm a i'm a veteran agent but i don't have that kind of track record i can't show the map of like we showed your map postcard and it's like he sold every house on the right like twice yeah so so if they don't have that i've always said use your broker use your team the company and then put at the bottom a team always outperforms an individual what would you say to that newer agent or that that stuck agent that doesn't have the track record but they want to get more listings and they're losing they might even losing because they have the confidence to make the phone call because they haven't done the work what do you tell them that when you start to list you were going to have a long career in this business like this this goes back to like when real estate was invented or whenever this all started happening it's the people that have the inventory control the market and that's going to give you a lot more freedom if you want your time back you want to have more weekends you want to have more nights list more properties yeah you could handle that with a phone call like am i working on the weekend sure but i'm usually making phone calls from my home office and not out working with somebody or calling a salary to go through let's let's go through our offers yeah exactly yeah like or hey we got a bunch of offers coming in let's set a deadline on monday and i'll call you then and like that way you know you're in communication it's a quick call but you get your time back you get more freedom so they i think they know that what about um tell me if you were okay you're leaving tomorrow and you're moving to naples and you're not going to work with byron and his buddies and anybody else we know right like so many great agents down there fort myers etc and you're going brand new how do you utilize your company to win more listings well it's just it's the same thing right you see what the company's doing so you work for xyz company hey uh so hey hey mr broker or mr mrs broker can you give me a list of all the homes you sold last year and then you make your own google map with the company and co-brand it with you right that's what that's what they're there for i mean we co-brand everything with our team now where it's never my picture on there it's the team member they're hosting an open house they're doing this they're doing that and we do that for all their marketing pieces as well yeah so it's the same thing i mean it just leveraged the team and if there's not a lot of sales make the photos bigger right make the pins bigger you've told me this before so it's one of my favorite lines if you only sold five houses just make the bubbles bigger make the photos bigger right yep okay so that's good um what kind of objections do you get the most is it is it always fees is it you're in that competitive situation and they just feel like the market's so hot i should just go with phyllis i don't know who phyllis is but just phyllis must be in philadelphia that may be what it is besides besides fees what are the biggest objections you get so are you gonna have are you gonna have enough time to work with me big objections oh yeah all the top producers here in this thing yep um and you know that that's a big one and it's a legitimate concern i mean objections are really just questions right more so so hey great great reframe by the way the objections are just questions i'm just trying to understand well they're trying they're thinking about working with you and they want to get everything squared away so you know that that's a big one that i've seen probably more often than anything else and it's hey i got to make a distinction you know when you're going like you're at your doctor's office and they're like i'm going to recommend you do this you don't go okay you're like well what about this and that and this are those objections no i mean i guess yeah i mean or am i just trying to figure out like is this the right move for me great reframe i just wanted to stop and just you know say that so tom yeah my concern is just look you're really busy we see you selling a lot of houses i just i get a little nervous i don't want to be someone told me that i'm going to be handed off like an assistant so you're not gonna be handed off to an assistant our assistants will be assisting in the process that's what they're there for and let me ask you this time so you go to the doctor right you gotta get surgery do you wanna go to the guy who's doing it every day and has it down to a science or do you want maybe the person is doing it twice a year i'm going with the one that's doing it every day yeah yeah and this is your biggest asset right yeah you want the same level of expertise there or you want a rookie do you actually say that to people yeah is that just a philly thing i mean at that point there there is nothing to lose and it's right like this is when you have to close and look it's you talk about confidence right yeah it takes some confidence to be able to say this stuff and like the first time i said it i was i was like oh my god is this going to like what's going to happen here and then they're going to punch me and then it works right right and then okay now i can say it again but that's where the role play is important because your role play should be harder than the actual calls yeah yeah yeah yeah all right so so all right tom i i i appreciate that that was actually kind of a funny line i'm being the seller again but man i'm looking down at that that commission number and i'm thinking to myself this house is going to sell in two seconds man we have a beautiful house beautiful day i've like you know many agents have written like these little notes to me telling me they've got a buyer for the house and you know and that kind of stopped though recently hud rules pay attention right so right pay attention everybody hud rules pay attention um but i was getting all these letters and like all these people telling me that you know my house would sell in two seconds and i appreciate your marketing but i just feel like this thing's gonna sell so that fee knowing the speed of this just feels a little unreasonable for me i i hear you tom and and it's really easy to leave money on the table right now in a market like this this is a mistake that a lot of sellers make they take the first fast offer they don't have a launch plan most agents all they do is they put a sign up they put it on the internet and they wait for somebody to show up we have this documented pre-launch plan that we use where there's a run-up so instead of just popping up on the mls and the buyers come and you cross your fingers we're marketing the buyers before your home comes on the market i want a line out the door at the open house on sunday yeah we're going to have them compete for your home and as i showed you on our sales results here we get eight percent more than the competition for our listings so yeah the fee's a little higher but you're going to net more and that's what you want right i mean i mean can you be just like a little break man come on i'm a negotiator full time this is what i do for a living like i just you know like can we split it i mean is there something we can do so i appreciate the question and i get you're a negotiator i am too so how would you think i handle when i'm negotiating on your behalf if i can't even protect my own fee so i know that line right do you actually say that yes yes and how do they respond some people say okay yeah others they give you a little bit of a hard time yeah and like i'm not gonna and we we've talked about this like i am pro deal right like i want the listing and i know i'm not going to walk away from 25 000 over like a thousand dollars yeah 2 000 or 5 000. that's a mistake some agents make they take so much pride in that and when you approach your businesses i'm getting two more sales from this listing right i want the listing anyway yep you gotta you gotta look at the bigger picture so but yes we do say these things and yes you don't know if they're gonna work unless you try i mean if you just roll over every time then guess what's gonna happen the next time you have an easier objection come up you're gonna lose money because your skills aren't sharp yeah so if we go back to the very beginning of this conversation we're talking about basically like the the transition was 9 to 11 making making that appointment every single day being listing focus versus buyer focus which is so funny like every seminar trust me we've done 74 seminars this year as i'm sitting here inside the office with you like 74 zoom you know zoomed out every single one of them i have a point where i say you have to make a decision if you're complaining about no inventory what are you going to do about it complaining is not a strategy calling your past clients and sphere is a strategy working a geographic farm is a strategy doing any lead pillars of strategy but you've got to have that focus on get more listings what in kind of closing here we didn't really get to the team stuff right you know sake of time right maybe we'll we'll do a second oh wow look at that second i'll return the email this time that was my bad i i i went home looked that up and told you so that is on me so so what do you say what do you say to that person kind of in closing like to help them get over this this mindset which it's not going to stop for a while there's no there's nothing in the data that says we're going to suddenly have a massive surge of inventory and there'll be no buyers it's the absolute opposite yeah what do you say to that person that's struggling like they're listening and they want to do it man but it's just like dude in my market or dude my situation or when you know my was four my parents didn't give me a pony that's why i can't make the phone calls like all kidding aside like coach that person a little bit so you got two choices right you can keep losing out in multiple offer situations with the buyers you have right and cross your fingers and hope it gets accepted or you can be the one fielding those offers right and saying hey we're gonna review everything on monday and go hang out with your family on sunday or go do something else do something maybe go on another listing appointment maybe do some prospecting whatever instead of running to place after place after place and having your clients lose four five six times they get ticked off at you and then they go hire somebody else yeah so this is a decision you've got to make and you've got to say yes to yourself first because when you do that like i mean look my wife's here like this is like when i made that decision things got easier and it was you know it was not easy when we when i was working with buyers and doing all this stuff it was hard and it takes a toll on you i mean 20 years long don't be doing anything and i've seen what happens when you don't make that commitment and so it's you can keep losing out on multiple offer situations or you can be the one feeling them yep what side do you want to be on right i mean i don't even know what i'll say like it's a fundamental it's it's a fundamental truth everybody knows it list to last all those cliches all of that is true inventory always like if you are in control of the inventory you solve everything i'm gonna i mean i said one last question but i'm asking you one one one last question on the flip side what are you teaching your agents to do to get their office accepted so we have just like the hacks yeah um we have a so we had a coaching call about this with them um know all the data right like all the like you got to understand the economy so you can preempt or frame hey this is going to be really competitive you guys got to know what's up and here's what's going on in the economy so the millennial home buyer data inventory rates pennsylvania we got a lot of pen-up demand because things were shut down that's maybe unique to your state right so understand that first be the knowledge broker because if you can communicate that effectively then and you're using third-party sources because they're going to look at you you being the agent this guy just wants to sell another house yeah but when the mls data is telling us that or the mortgage bankers association or nar all of a sudden it's it's data and their facts that's number one understand the economy and get what's going on then you we broke down the seven different ways we can sweeten offers and one of them is uh and again every state's different so price is one way to compete right you might have an appraisal issue there so you have to be aware of that making up the difference in an appraisal shortfall that's a term in the contract we see a lot of waiving inspections right hey we tell people if you get the chance to have a home inspection you're really lucky right now like that's a big deal yeah um i think the data was 20 of homes that sold last year had a waived inspection that's higher than ever and that's a big deal um so waiving inspections putting all your deposit money up front be willing to pay the seller's transfer tax because then they net more yeah and again every state's different but uh yeah yeah but we split it in pennsylvania um being willing to um let them have a post settlement possession or give them whatever settlement date they want yeah we've had some people say hey we'll pay your movers well i mean they're just doing anything they can to help the seller out and as an agent there's some things you want to do strategically be nice to the listing agent don't be a jerk that was like the number one thing i was good that's the number one thing i say to people like gotta be nice follow the offer instructions clean beautiful simple well-articulated offer yeah and and call the agent before you submit the offer and say hey what's the seller looking for here how can i get my this accepted yeah some people say well i can't tell you that yeah a lot of people will tell you what the seller wants yeah my view is a listing agent i want exactly what the seller wants so we're going to share that with them and we give very clear instructions so literally be nice follow the instructions and write a really clean offer and call the listing agent get some information don't just write the offer and send it over without any communication which happens all the time right right i was doing it first of all that was spot on super valuable for people i was doing a uh a training a couple days ago and before the training actually happened like i get a note from the client saying hey could you also cover that red-headed coach gal it's alicia yeah yeah yeah so i text lately so i'm like hey i need that one little thing she's like oh yeah here it is it's the ladder up strategy if you heard that on price yeah yeah yeah like you know tom and bridget are you guys willing to lose this house at 515 000 to another person and what you do is just getting them 515 20 5 25 5 30 until the buyer says at that price i'm okay if another buyer gets it yeah that technique has helped a lot of people get their offers accepted but you got to be nice first you got to write a clean offer laddering up and making sure they get to the highest possible price recognizing the appraisal thing which i love that that's like the number two thing for you guys that was awesome what else are you doing to get what else are you doing besides maybe like the laddering up on pricing to get people to write good offers so we'll price wise question like hey how would you feel if you lost this home over a couple thousand bucks yeah and like they'll like their mouth will drop and they're like i wouldn't feel so good so let's do the right thing here yeah and let's put our best foot forward because we only might get one shot here and if you're gonna if you're gonna be upset that you lose the home but i would have gone to x right now the best deal a buyer can get is getting the house right period and but if you give them the data up front and let them know the market conditions and tell them like hey is this the market for you some people may not be ready to buy a house right now and that's where it comes down like the motivation which is ultimately you got to have motivated clients you got to know what the reason is behind their move yeah love it all right so closing closing closing thoughts anything you want to say to the community anything you want to say by the way where do they follow you on instagram facebook instagram your name i'm guessing at tom toole three rd for the third because there's many of us there's actually four um four now um yes so yeah that's about instagram's best place to follow me and um i you know i think the whole all the stuff we talked about here super easy to implement i mean i don't think anything here is you've heard this before science right it's not rocket science i'm not the smartest guy i'm one of the best implementers and i will i will you know i'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel i'm just going to do what works so be coachable i think is the best advice because when you're coachable and you follow people that know what they're doing you're gonna see massive changes in your business i don't think it's anything more complicated than that yeah love it man so appreciative of you i would say you know we have so many funny moments in sort of our journey together but as i said you even last night i'm just super proud of you man thank you so much for being on the podcast thank you so much for sharing follow them on instagram tom toole t-o-o-l-e the third three yeah it's three rd three rd yeah uh and and obviously like if you're an agent i would also check out some of his content because he puts out a lot of good content agent facing right so around the world we're seeing like you know a lot of our clients are now doing this is a nice give back strategy and it is a great recruiting strategy for people that and referrals agencies and all that good stuff so killer all right we got to balance into our next meetings but thank you guys so much for watching as always leave a comment thank you so much for just being on this journey with me and uh hey if you haven't written some comment about it liked it done all that good stuff i'd love to do that as well all right thank you guys so much we'll see you guys soon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Tom Ferry

Views: 27,306

Rating: 4.89644 out of 5

Keywords: tom ferry, real estate, real estate coaching, real estate training, real estate school, real estate marketing, business entrepreneur, tom toole, Tom Ferry Podcast, Tom Ferry Podcast Experience, Real Estate Podcast, Real Estate Scripts, Real Estate Role Play, How to Get More Real Estate Closings, How to Get More Listings, How to Get More Real Estate Transactions, 80 Minutes of Killer Hands-On Real Estate Expertise from Tom Toole

Id: MKQdKq3vW5s

Length: 80min 54sec (4854 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021